By ALAN SCHERSTUHL April 10, 2014

Has it ever occurred to contemporary commercial filmmakers that maybe audiences could take a movie's word for it that a character has been tortured? That perhaps implication and skilled acting could communicate the idea with sufficient power, that we might all be spared the screaming and limb-breaking and slow-motion violation of the body? That maybe brutal victimization and the stripping away of humanity is not necessarily an opportunity for a setpiece? That the familiarity of violent interrogation scenarios from so many movies and TV shows demands that each new entry be more harrowing than the last? That watching such horror again and again so diminishes such horror, both as an onscreen effect and a real-world fact, that clods such as Sean Hannity yammer on sometimes about how... More >>>